ALICE

ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is a heavy-ion detector on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ring. It is designed to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where a phase of matter called quark-gluon plasma forms.

The ALICE collaboration uses the 10,000-tonne ALICE detector – 26 m long, 16 m high, and 16 m wide – to study quark-gluon plasma. The detector sits in a vast cavern 56 m below ground close to the village of St Genis-Pouilly in France, receiving beams from the LHC.

The collaboration counts more than 1000 scientists from over 100 physics institutes in 30 countries.

Bit Preservation:

On tape: data integrity check during each access request

On disk: periodically integrity checks

Data:

7.2 PB of raw data were acquired between 2010 and 2013 which is stored on tape and disk in 2 replicas.

Documentation:

ALICE analysis train system & bookkeeping in Monalisa DB: for the last 3-4 years

Re-use of data within the collaboration(s), sharing with the wider scientific community, Open Access releases

Value:

Analysis, publications and PhDs continue to be produced

Uniqueness:

Unique data sets from the LHC in pp and HI

Similar data can only be collected by the other LHC experiments

Resources:

Since the experiment is still working, budget and FTEs are shared with the operation of computing centre

Status:

First data from 2010 has been released to the public

(8 TB ≈ 10% of data)

Some analysis tools are available on Opendata for the CERN Master class program

Issues:

Improve user interface

The interaction with the open-access portal is very slow due to long communication times. E.g. the uploading of data is done by some people in the IT department. The interaction via an automated website would be faster.